


A Good Guy

by ChristmasInJuly



Category: A Teacher - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Jesus I can't believe I'm the first person writing about this show, Sex and Crying, Tragic Nick Robinson, happy for now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29119833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChristmasInJuly/pseuds/ChristmasInJuly
Summary: What happened at the hotel between Eric and Alison after their high school reunion?
Relationships: Eric/Alison
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	A Good Guy

The sex was good. Not too predictable or dramatic. It was just right. Sex with Alison hit that sweet spot between romance and good, old fashioned lust. And for Eric, it was the first time in a long time that he’d had sex without comparing his partner to Ms. Wilson immediately after.

Alison had that sleepy, happy look as she rolled off him. He missed the weight of her body and the heat of her breasts - her best feature, his favorite feature – as she pulled the sheet up and over her torso. Eric was trying to catch his breath. She reached over and ran her fingers through his hair and he couldn’t help but smile.

“I am so glad you came,” she whispered. “I’m glad I got to see you again.”

Eric closed his eyes and tried to sink into this moment. To be fully present. To live inside Alison’s kind words. It was… challenging.

Alison got up to pee, the hotel bathroom door clicking shut. For a moment, brief and painful, he had the urge to leave. Eric could see himself outside of himself, outside of his own body, like he was watching a TV show or something. He was gathering all his clothes and putting them on as quickly as he could in this vision. He was sweaty and spent. He was leaving in a rush, in a panic. He was suddenly, mentally, an 18-year-old kid standing outside a cheap roadside motel looking out at the Texas countryside.

A flashback.

Eric curled his fingers into the sheets and gritted his teeth. He counted slowly from ten… nine… eight…

He heard water running in the bathroom and Eric didn’t want Alison to see him like this. She didn’t need to see his body tense, his jaw locked up, and his face probably twisted into the usual pained contortions it went into whenever he experienced a flashback. He’d only recently learned how to manage the unwelcome thoughts and memories by grounding himself. He’d successfully counted down to ‘one’ and had managed to relax his jaw at least when Alison re-emerged. Her long dark hair was over her shoulder, her naked body was easing back into bed, and her face was beautiful as it’d had always been.

She paused after getting back under the covers and locked eyes with him. It looked like she was getting ready to come in for another kiss.

“My turn,” he said with a half-smile.

Alison leaded back and nodded.

Eric got up to go to the bathroom. Once the door was shut he took a long hard look at himself in the mirror.

‘Get your shit together,’ he berated himself. ‘Get it together before you fuck this up.’

He was shaking and wondered if Alison noticed. Things had been going well since they left the reunion. He was so… so… desperate to keep it that way. 

* * *

Alison took note of how long Eric had been in the bathroom. But she didn’t want to be weird about it. When he finally came back out, almost ten minutes later, and after what sounded like the world’s shortest pee, he seemed far away.

Although she wanted to kiss him, Alison had to keep reminding herself: consent.

It was so hard though. He was so handsome and even as he got back in bed with jerky movements and that slight sense of trepidation, Alison felt nothing but love towards him. It had to be the heartbroken high school girl in her taking over.

“So…” He said, tucking his arms behind his head. “No sleep before your flight?”

“I knew I wasn’t going to get any sleep from the start,” she said, playfully.

Eric looked up at the ceiling, his casual smile fading. Alison leaned back onto a pillow with one elbow propped underneath. 

“Did you want to sleep?” Alison asked. “Or are you going to stay?”

He flinched a little. “Maybe I should get going.”

Alison shook her head. “I wasn’t… kicking you out. I was actually hoping you’d stay. We don’t have to talk or anything, if you don’t want to. It’s up to you.”

Eric seemed like he was thinking about it and Alison got super nervous. Had she said the wrong thing? She wasn’t implying that him staying was bad. Did he take it that way? There were butterflies in her stomach and Alison was not the kind of girl to get butterflies in her stomach. Especially after 10 years. Not after all this time.

* * *

The thought of Alison wanting him to stay was both a relief and extremely stressful.

“You should talk,” he said. “I’ll listen. How about that?”

“Why me and no you?” Alison asked, wide-eyed and inquisitive.

Eric shrugged and grinned a little. “I don’t know… I guess, you’ve probably been living a way more interesting life than me.”

He couldn’t tell her the truth. Which was he didn’t want to talk about himself, not to her, not to anybody really. At the same time, he was scared to let her talk. Because what if she asked questions? What if she asked him if he was okay? He didn’t know if he could bullshit Alison and he didn’t know if he even wanted to.

He was scared to have a real conversation with someone who knew him. Someone who really knew him and not the caricature he’d become. Someone who knew him before his life fell apart, before he lost his innocence, before he ruined Claire Wilson’s life and Claire Wilson ruined his.

“Ummm.” Alison shrugged back at him. “There isn’t much left to tell. I like living in New Orleans, I like being a social worker, one day I’m gonna finally get that damn catering side hustle off the ground. I told you all this at the bar, Eric.”

“I know,” he said, his eyes closed again and smiling wide, like an asshole.

“Oh, so you’re just fucking with me,” Alison asked, climbing on top of him and poking him. “Is that it, Walker? Trick me into running my mouth all night so you can just lay there and joke with the guys later about how annoying I am? Hmm?”

“No, no, no,” he said, laughing. “I’m not. I swear.”

Alison stopped and when Eric didn’t feel her moving, he opened one eye to peer up at her and froze.

“I think that is the first genuine laugh I’ve gotten out of you all night.”

Eric felt his jaw tighten again. He put his hands on Alison’s thighs and gently rolled her body off his, again. But this time, Alison wrapped her arms around him and pulled him in. She hugged him. And he let her. He buried his face in her hair and held her tight and close.

“It’s okay,” she whispered in his ear. “Whatever you want, it’s okay.”

He didn’t know why, but he felt overcome with emotion. He was glad she was holding him, her chin on his shoulder, because he didn’t know if he could handle Alison looking him in his eyes as they filled with tears.

“I shouldn’t… I shouldn’t…”

“Shhh,” she murmured. “It’s okay.”

He opened his mouth to try again, but he couldn’t get the rest out. It was too hard to say, _I shouldn’t’ve left you at the dance._ He’d already said that and Alison was unphased. _Oh, that happened so long ago!_ she said.

Eric didn’t know how to say, it wasn’t a long time ago to me. She wouldn’t understand that Homecoming 2013 was a tape being played on repeat in his head. Ten years ago still felt like last night. And he regretted that night. He wished to God he had stayed with Alison, left with their friends, took her home like he said he would, texted her goodnight, called her in the morning. The thought of that alternate reality, that happy ending he could’ve had, was why he was so miserable.

He didn’t have to go with Claire. She didn’t march onto the dancefloor and drag him into that parking lot. She didn’t threaten him. She didn’t even speak. All she did was make eyes at him and he was running off behind her. Eric felt like such an idiot. He had autonomy. Why didn’t he just say no?

Alison held him tighter and Eric wasn’t sure why, until he felt the wetness on her hair and realized he was crying.

“It’s okay… you’re okay,” she said softly.

“I’m not okay,” he said.

The flashbacks were coming and he didn’t try to stop them. The elation he felt in Claire’s car, the way his mind went blank when she was fucking him, the ego, the joy, the elation. The extreme high. Then going back to school and realizing what he’d done. The extreme low.

He had a moment to come clean that day at school. When Alison confronted him in the hallway and looked up at him with those big brown eyes, begging for an explanation. For a moment he was going to tell her. It was on the tip of his tongue. Eric regretted that too. He regretted the secrets. He regretted the lies. He’d lost so much that night, but losing Alison, he was realizing now, was the one thing he wished above all else he hadn’t lost.

* * *

Holding Eric as he cried hot, silent tears, was almost enough to make Alison cry herself.

Hearing him say he wasn’t okay, wasn’t a shock. Not at all. It was the way he said it, like it was simply a fact that was as unchangeable as the position of the stars, was what broke her heart.

Alison kissed his shoulder and felt the tension in his body loosen ever so slightly.

“I’m here.”

He didn’t respond. It was okay. This couldn’t have been a cake walk for him and it wasn’t for her either.

Eric Walker wasn’t, at the time, what Alison would call the love of her life or anything. He had broken up with her the year before Claire Wilson came into their lives. His reasoning was full of shit, claiming she was “too intense” and wasn’t sure if they were “like, compatible and stuff.” She knew it was really because Logan and some of his other friends didn’t really like her.

Funny, she was plenty compatible when her bra came off. But even she couldn’t begrudge him that. Their sex _was_ nice. Eric was gentle and polite and looked at her with that ‘woah’ expression that made a girl feel good.

She had made out with a cute blonde on a rival debate team a few months later and had dated this good-looking black guy over the summer. They were alright, but no chemistry, no spark. Eric coming back to her was not love in her eyes, just the typical movements of a bunch of bored kids in a small-ish town who didn’t have a lot of options to date around. And Eric never stopped being handsome, which didn’t hurt either.

If you’d told Alison that she was going to be fighting against a grown ass woman for the attention and affection of her high-school boyfriend, she’d have laughed until she could no longer breathe. It wasn’t reality. It sounded, even now, like a sad porno. But this was their lives. Ms. Wilson, the English teacher, was fucking her date to the homecoming dance, while she was crying in the gymnasium bathroom and asking her friends, “Why? Why did he leave me?”

It was fucked up. The whole thing was so fucked up.

Eric began to pull away and Alison loosened her grip to let him. She realized he was only shifting his position, turning his back to her. Her neck and hair were a little damp from where his tears kept falling. She couldn’t tell what his body language meant. She wanted to cuddle up against him, wrap her arms around his waist and hold him. She could be the big spoon.

But her years of work with troubled people – battered women, homeless kids, non-violent offenders trying to turn their lives around – told her to leave him be. Alison stayed close. Physically close. She wanted Eric to be able to feel the warmth radiating off her body. And she secretly hoped he would let her in.

That was the hardest part for her, once the news spread, once Eric stopped answering her calls and texts. It was wanting to talk to him and knowing he wouldn’t. It was waiting to see what would happen with them and knowing nothing would. It was having to move on and knowing she could, but that he probably couldn’t. And there was no one she wanted to talk to about this… except him.

However, Alison was also a realist. She didn’t like to linger on the past. She didn’t think it was healthy to bottle things up. She and Eric were living in completely different worlds, completely different realities.

Laying there, listening to Eric sniffle, Alison had to admit something to herself that was very uncomfortable for someone like her to admit. After all, she was a feminist. Always had been, always will be. She was a bleeding heart. She believed in justice and love and shit, like Sailor Moon. She had gone to school wanting to save the world. She had gotten out of school and was trying to save the world, but with less hits than misses. She had been living her adult life looking towards the future, hoping for the best, and keeping an open mind.

Yet, even she had to admit, as ready as she was for love and as much as she’d been thinking about settling down and getting married and maybe even moving back to Texas… Alison had to admit, falling in love with a man who’d been hurt might be too much for her.

Male victims of sexual abuse, as she’d learned in college, generally took longer on average than women to seek help and to begin the process of healing. The stigma was stronger, the guilt was deeper, and the trauma was all-encompassing. Alison had worked with a few men like this and they denied any and all help. They pulled away, like Eric was doing now. While her heart was telling her to don’t give up right away, Alison was practical and knew, if she tried to pursue this, it could end badly.

“Sorry,” he said, sniffling again. “Sorry, I – I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Alison replied, “We don’t have to talk. We can just be quiet.”

“Are you sure?” Eric asked.

“Of course, I’m sure,” she said. “I just like being here with you.”

* * *

Eric felt so ashamed. To be crying all over Alison on what was supposed to be a fun, light-hearted evening. He was nervous at the school, he knew he looked it too. He knew he felt uncomfortable and that it was showing until Alison came and Eric honestly thought he’d be okay. He was fine at the bar. He was fine when they were having sex. He didn’t know where this well-spring of emotion was coming from. He didn’t know why he couldn’t keep it together.

He accepted her invitation to say nothing. He rolled back over to face her and decided he’d take her quietness with a side of eye contact. Eric had struggled with that over the years too.

Alison smiled at him, half of her face obscured by her hair and the pillow. She sank down a little deeper into the sheets and got comfortable. Almost like it was bedtime. He tried to get comfortable too.

It was hard though. He felt vulnerable. He felt exposed. But he also felt like he could trust Alison. She was different. This experience had been different. She hadn’t mentioned Claire once. She hadn’t asked him about that night or any other night with Claire. With her, he didn’t have to hold his breath waiting for the inappropriate comment or the pity or the 'hot for teacher' joke. She didn’t make him feel like a victim. He didn’t have to live in fear that she defined him by that one abusive, predatory, disgusting relationship. He made her feel… almost like… he was normal.

“I wanna see you again,” Alison said.

His heart began to race. Again? Already? Even after… all that? Part of him felt scared and repulsive and doubted she was being sincere. And another part of him was cautiously, carefully filled with hope.

“Ah… I don’t know, Al…”

“I just wanna see you again. No pressure. No big plans,” she said. “Okay?”

* * *

He was thinking and Alison, as she watched him think, wasn’t sure if she could handle him saying ‘no’. Her heart was too into it. She was too attached. When she thought about it, she couldn’t even truthfully say she’d ever been completely over it. Or completely over him.

Her freshman year of college, people had DMed her with UT-Austin stories of Eric Walker’s sexual escapades and mood swings. Alison was so disappointed to hear that he had dropped out. That boy had dreamed of becoming a doctor. He loved science. He wanted to help people. He had a future and Claire Wilson took that away from him and sometimes it filled Alison with so much rage, so much sorrow, so much hate, she could barely take it.

But soon stories about Eric were few and far in between. Cause he had begun to roam, and their old friends and classmates had grown up and grown apart, and no one knew what he was doing. Alison had to let go. She dated other men and tried to move on, but a piece of Eric was still in her heart. Her high school sweetheart. She thought that night at the homecoming dance hadn’t left a lasting effect on her. Until therapy a year ago revealed that she had a fear of abandonment. And she was dealing with it well, but it was still a challenge.

Alison was lucky, she hadn’t ever been hurt the way Eric had been hurt. Her path to healing wasn’t as complex.

His would be. And even then he may still never heal. They may never get married or have kids or live normal, well-adjusted lives. They may never really get to be together.

But what if they could? What if they tried? Alison was willing to try.

“Okay,” he finally replied.

He got up and got dressed. Alison watched him with a mix of sadness and a cautious optimism, knowing full well this might be the last time she ever got to see him.

Eric grabbed his jacket and paused at the foot of the bed, his body turned towards the hotel room door. He had a shy smile on his face and his shoulders were hunched a bit.

Alison smiled at him and then yawned.

“Go to bed,” he said. “And uh, have a good flight.”

“Call me,” she said.

“I will.”

And with that little smile still on his face, he walked over to her and kissed her. He turned off the light. He walked out and Alison didn’t lay down and close her eyes until she heard the click and his footsteps fade away from the door.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this is a really fucked up show. I had to get my emotions out after watching it because wow. It's tragic and difficult and thought-provoking. If you want to watch please be aware that there is a lot of disturbing content (grooming, manipulation, and emotional abuse from an older woman to a younger man) and it's totally fine if you watch those first couple episodes and are like NOPE, can't do it. I only wrote this because I wanted a somewhat happy ending for the character (Eric) that suffers the most. That's what fanfic is for, right?


End file.
